More than 20,000 Palestinian Arabs now work at the industrial parks and construction sites that employ them throughout Judea and Samaria. Despite continual efforts by Mr. Abbas and Israel’s haters throughout the world to slander Israel as an “Apartheid” entity, the reality is that Arabs often earn from their Jewish employers twice the income they command within Mr. Abbas’s polity. These are good salaries, and those wages support large families. The people whose lives would be affected by the cynicism – the workers in the industrial parks – do not want to give up those jobs. The Associated Press interviewed Suhail Jaber, who supports his family of eight by working in a picture frame company in the community of Barkan in Samaria, an industrial park employs some 5,000 Arabs. Jaber told the AP that, if forced by Abbas to quit without being assured a new job, he might turn to stealing to feed his family. Another employee, Samer Awad, “said he would sleep in Barkan’s furniture factory to avoid detection by Palestinian law enforcement, rather than quit.”

This pathological hatred of Jews transcends the worst images of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. At the core of Scripture, in its chapter five (“The Table”), Surah 5:57-62, the Koran discusses the “People of the Book,” portraying Jews as sub-human, despicable animals: “Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you . . . . Say: ‘People of the Book, do you hate us for any reason other than . . . that most of you are evil-doers?’. . . .You see many of them vie with one another in sin and wickedness . . . . Evil is what they do.” Thus, Allah will lay his “worst reward” on the Jews, “transforming them into apes and pigs.” The vicious ape/pig demonization of Jews recurs throughout the Koran (see, e.g., “The Cow,” 2:64-65), and that vicious imagery – a veritable Blood Libel – has been a central message propagated by the Palestine Authority in its mass media for years, even as it is a recurring Friday sermon topic telecast on Palestine Arab television – the literal demonizing of Jews as blood brothers or children of apes and pigs.

For all the hatred, perhaps nowhere in the world is Apartheid in Palestine more pernicious than . . . within the Palestine Authority. Only within the Arab world do we find civilian populations in their thousands consigned to “refugee camps” for sixty years. This perpetual consignment – indeed, virtual internment – constitutes one of the worst crimes against humanity we have witnessed in the modern era: the concerted persecution of Palestinian Arabs by cynical Arab regimes who have planted them in “refugee camps.” Nowhere is the cynicism more manifest than it is within the Palestine Authority, which maintains “refugee camps” in cities like Jenin. Consider: If those denizens indeed are Palestinian Arabs, and if the Palestine Authority oversees the homeland of the Palestinians, then how in the world can people living in their own land, under a government freely elected by their own people, be deemed “refugees”?

Those “refugee camps” are historical anomalies, thoroughly anachronistic. Their residents are dumped onto international welfare rolls, under the rubric of a cynically anti-Jewish United Nations agency, the “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (UNRWA), which runs the camps and their schools. The UNRWA has a vested interest – namely, preserving their own existence, preserving their own continued employment and pay checks, preserving their jobs – in perpetuating the historical crime of refusing to let the residents be absorbed into their local environments.

During the last century, the world has seen so many tragically painful “population exchanges” play themselves out on the world stage. Greek ethnics were forced out of Bulgaria and into Greece, while Bulgarian ethnics were forced from Greece into Bulgaria. In 1922, under the League of Nations, 1.25 million Greek Orthodox ethnics were transferred from Turkey, and half a million Moslems were transferred reciprocally to Turkey from Greece. Fridtjof Nansen, who oversaw the population exchange, was awarded the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. In 1940, under the Treaty of Craiova, there was a massive population exchange: 80,000 Romanian ethnics were forced into Bulgaria, and 65,000 Bulgarian ethnics forced out of Romania. After World War II, between 14-16 million ethnic Germans were transferred out of Central and Eastern Europe, and into Germany. Poland and the Soviet Union exchanged populations: between 1944 and 1946, some 2 million people, Polish ethnics sent to Poland from the Ukraine and Ukrainians sent out of Poland, were transferred. More than 5 million Hindus and Sikhs were forced to India from the regions that became Pakistan, and more than 6 million Moslems were pushed from India into Pakistan.

Where are the languishing Bulgarian refugee camps? Greek refugee camps? Romanian/ Polish/ German/ Ukrainian/ Hindu/ Sikh refugee camps? Where are the Bosnian Moslem refugee camps? Why is there no massive international welfare apparatus in the rubric of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for any of these refugees? How is it that no one even thinks to ask?

Maybe, as Mr. Abbas directs $50 million to pay Palestinian Arabs to leave their jobs alongside Jews, and to return to the squalor of his homespun “refugee camps,” it is time for Americans to ask that question – before we write him our next billion-dollar check.

Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues. He is author of general Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com.

Although not new, the points raised by the author are excellent. First and foremost is how can the Arabs of Judea and Samaria (The West Bank) be considered refugees if they are living under Palestinian Authority rule? Are the Arabs living under Hamas rule in Gaza also refugees? If so, why? With all the aid they get, why are there still refugee camps in Gaza and The West Bank?

There are well over 1 million Arabs living in Israel. Many of them are poor to be sure but are there any Arab refugee camps in Israel?

solemnman

They are in refugee camps(not in tents-but in houses like everybody else) TO GET THE AID!!! In 1949 the u.n. commission ,in charge of refugees ,declared-of the 800,000 who claimed refugee status-300,000 were bogus.

http://www.lifeshaven.net Utopian

The history of the Arabs against the Jews goes back a l-o-n-g time. Arabs are descendants of a man named Ishmael, the son of Abraham. Both the Jews and Arabs come from the seed of Abraham. But each son had a different mother: one was his wife and the other a slave. It is the slave that hates the free and the blessed, as it is written, "And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him." Genesis 16:12. But in the end the father of Arabs, Ishmael, worshiped the God of Abraham (Gen.25:9), not the god of Muhammad called allah. Therefore, Arab Muslims dishonor their fathers Ishmael and Abraham in violation of the 5th Commandment while hypocritically claiming to honor God and declaring their superiority over all men. Just another example of the ignorance of arrogance!

http://intensedebate.com/people/naomilitvin naomilitvin

I read this article with extreme interest and have posted it to my facebook page. Thank you this excellent, intelligent piece that tells the truths.

Elliot

I have been asking these same questions since I became informed some nine years ago.
However, we are punished if we don't pay our taxes, obey the law of the land. So, our tax dollars go to many ridiculous and failed efforts. It is a rinse and repeat mentality.
The world's leaders lack wisdom. There are few among them that are capable of leadership. Far too may are only capable at bullying. They aren't good people to begin with-sorely lacking in almost every respect.This is mainly a dysfuntional world and we will be lucky /blessed if any sanity prevails.Sorry to be such a downer but why does the world go on suffering these mean-spirited fools -the Palestinian Authority being one among thousands ?

Elliot

Good article by the way Mr. Fischer, but like most good, it will go unheeded.

Supinder

Abbas is utilising the Ghandian form of protest.

He is refusing to economic patronage to support the settlements in the West Bank. Its completely non-violent and should be applauded.

Well Done Abbas.

Kanwi

Supinder: That's his choice to do that to his people but why should he get foreign aide as a result? May be that one billion $'s from America should go to Israel to pass back to those Arabs making a contribution to society through their employment as an off-setting tax rebate. It would probably do wonders in developing the Arab economy if used for this purpose as well instead of making people lazy and dependant on hand-outs in theory but mostly siphoned off into corrupt Swiss bank accounts. How much has Abbas got in his account? Arafat siphoned off $40 billion over 20 years and where di Arafat's wife get her $4 billion from. ….aide money for sure.

Syd Barrett

I for one look forward to the day when God utterly destroys the children of Esau.

p.s. "…he named a son “Yasser” for his mentor…" Isn't that like naming your son Harvey Milk?